PIONEER TEXAS FEMINIST "SISSY" FARENTHOLD DIES

By Margalit Fox

New York Times

The year was 1968, the place Corpus Christi, Texas. The scene was a victory party for a Democratic candidate, elected to the Texas House of Representatives the night before.

At the party, a man approached Frances T. Farenthold, a prominent local resident.

“Mrs. Farenthold,” he said, “I had the pleasure of voting for your husband yesterday.”

“Thank you very much,” she replied. “But I think you’ll discover that you voted for me.”

“Well, hell,” the man said, “if I’d known that, I never would have voted for you.”

Ms. Farenthold, a politician, feminist, lawyer and human-rights advocate who died at 94 on Sunday at her home in Houston, became quite accustomed to incredulity on her election and long afterward during her half-century on the national stage.

The victory that night of Ms. Farenthold, widely known by the childhood nickname Sissy, had been no small trick. 

On her election, she became the only woman in the 150-member chamber and one of just two in the Texas Legislature. (The other, in the State Senate, was the Democrat Barbara Jordan, the eloquent Black lawyer who went on to serve in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979.)

Throughout her career, Ms. Farenthold met with casual condescension – the news media perennially described her as a mother of four – and overt discrimination: As a legislator she was shut out of committee meetings held at an all-male private club in Austin.

Yet during her two terms in the Texas House, from 1969 to 1973, she helped improve legislative transparency in the wake of a government stock-fraud scandal and spearheaded the passage of a state equal rights amendment.

To read rest of tribute, click on link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/frances-t-farenthold-liberal-force-in-texas-and-beyond-dies-at-94.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210928&instance_id=41490&nl=the-morning&regi_id=118696256&segment_id=70082&te=1&user_id=e686a99f0675424fa8b39ab931759509